The General Conference

The month of May was memorable in Brooklyn. You would have thought that there had been a deluge of theology raining forty days and forty nights, with no rainbow promising that the thing would never happen again. It seemed as if all the ministers of the land had broken loose. You passed them on every street. They stood in knots on the corner. If you wanted to say anything against Methodism, you had to look both ways, and up and down, before you dared to say it. They preached for us, but we soon found that would not do; for if the matter went on, our congregations would never consent to hear us again. It is very hard to go back from venison and partridge and canvas-back duck to plain fare. Almost all our citizens looked in upon the great religious convocation. Its appearance impressed us with three or four things.

Church courts nearly always look cadaverous. The majority of theologians are colorless and seem fagged out. But we do not believe there

12* 145 ever was an equal amount of avoirdupois weight in any other church court. Indeed, none of them were known, while they were in Brooklyn, to miss their meals. Preaching evidently agrees with all of them. I suppose that, as they change residence every three years, they do not stay long enough in a place to get into disquieting predicaments. And then there are climatic considerations that account for this sanitary condition. The doctors say that change of air is good for health, and itinerancy necessitates it. As a denomination, they do not smoke. Smoking sends many ministers to heaven before their time is up. I should like to go up on a cloud, but not on one of that kind. The clergyman looks pale, and his dear people think it is because he is becoming ethereal and sanctified; but I have been behind the scenes, and I now let the outsiders know that it is not religion that gives that pallor and unearthly appearance, but tobaccosmoke.

We need more physical development among the clergy. Leviticus, twenty-second chapter and twenty-second verse: “Blind, or broken, or maimed, or having a wen, or scurvy, or scabbed, ye shall not offer these unto the Lord.” The Bible clergy had muscle as well as grace. David was little, but too much for Goliath, and grand on a bearhunt. People talk of Paul as though he were a skeleton because he had a “thorn in the flesh,” but he was no skeleton. He rode horseback, and graduated from the saddle into the ministry. He did not fall from his horse because he was not a good rider. From the joyful view he took of almost everything, I know nothing ailed his liver. From the courageous way he stood before Felix, I know nothing was the matter with his backbone. At sixty-eight years of age he made a journey of more than fifteen hundred miles, before “palace cars” were invented, and still had enough strength left to write in a dungeon the Second Epistle to Timothy. How much skeleton was there about that? The ministry of 1892 will be strong, robust, agile and stalwart. Before the lamb and the lion lie down together there will have to be some fighting done, and I want our side to win. These men whom I saw down at the Conference we will place in the front of the battle, not only because we want stout men there, but because it is safer and more prudent for us to stay a little way back. The Conference was not a coroner’s inquest, but a jubilee. We never knew a company of men with whose constitution religion seemed to agree so well. In them the thunder of the world’s trouble had not soured the milk of human kindness. I do not know whether they will all get to heaven, but they all looked as if they were on their way to some very comfortable place. There ought to be room on every man’s face to write: “Praise ye the Lord!” If there are not enough glad things ahead of us, we had better turn round and go the other way. If we think the grapes of Canaan sourr better go back and eat onions in Egypt. There may be tough battles yet before us, but, with Pharaoh’s host gone under, I think Miriam can risk the clapping of one pair of cymbals.

The Conference was not a company or a regiment, but an army. If there ever was so large a church court assembled in this country, I never knew of it. It came across us overwhelmingly, the good that all those consecrated hearts must be doing. We want numbers. It will not do to pride ourselves any longer on being “a little flock.” Do not let us be afraid of crowds. Heaven, according to the theory of some, must be a vulgar place because there will be a vast multitude there. This harvest is so great that we want the round earth to gleam with the flash of sickles. When the time just now spoken of comes for the lion to lie down with the lamb, do not let there be ten lions to two lambs. From the fact that, according to David, the chariots of God are twenty thousand, I know the Lord likes plenty of artillery. From the fact that Elisha’s servant saw the mountains full of horses of fire, I know that God wants plenty of flaming war-chargers. I knew a minister who prided himself on the fewness of his congregation. He said they were the elect. I saw that they had been elected to be bored. He preached until about all had left the church save the sexton and my father. The sexton stayed because he was paid, and father endured it because he could sleep soundly whenever he willed, and besides that, since the minister had ruined the church in every other way, it was important that somebody be on hand to see that he did not steal the cushions and carpets. The sexton would not have seen any such depredations, because he was out in front of the church whittling sticks during service. Do not let us boast of our smallness. Let our churches and Conferences and General Assemblies be crowded with earnest souls.

But the Conference is gone. They stayed four or five weeks, attending closely to business, the most of them staying to the very last, illustrating what they do not believe in — namely, the perseverance of the saints. They stayed long enough to throw away the few bricks that remained of the wall between denominations. They got us all so mixed up that we had to take down our Heidelberg and Westminster Catechisms to find our real bearings. They left their blessing in our city, and took our blessing to their homes; and if this artide shall meet their eye, let them know that these words are written with a prayer that the Lord God of Israel may bless them and their children for ever.